


Somnium Amans

by junkyardvampire



Category: Basement Gerard - Fandom, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M, listen...this is for the like, three people on twitter who asked me to write this. lets just see where it goes okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22344871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkyardvampire/pseuds/junkyardvampire
Summary: A lean silhouette blocked a raging sun beating down on the arid landscape surrounding the pair. Gerard didn’t move a muscle. In fact, he shut his eyes again.The person took two heavy stomps towards him and crouched down in front of his face. Gerard kept his eyes closed but he felt a humid breath on his cheek.“Ya gotta start running.”(Party Poison x Basement Gerard)
Relationships: Party Poison/Gerard Way
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	1. Art Students Who Smoke Cigarettes Are Fucking Gay

“...something made of music and fire.”

  * DeWitt, All About Eve (1951)



There’s something magnetic about the way Gerard Way, twenty four, smokes a cigarette. 

He leans against his dorm building with a hand tucked into his back pocket as if he couldn’t find anything better to do; a bored glaze in his eyes, his pinky straying from the rest of his pin straight fingers, glaring at the sky and avoiding the glances from city pedestrians. Often there’s some material on his skin: acrylic paint on his cheek, charcoal on his collarbone, something expressive of how a true artist throws himself so deeply into his art that it’s inevitable to find the aftermath splattered on yourself. He would come across as one of  _ those _ art students from the city if he didn’t constantly dress like he just got out of an orgy with his paintbrushes. 

It was a sweetly windy spring evening that night. Gerard’s fingers were smudged with oil pastels and when he noticed he smirked, momentarily hesitating before wiping his hand on his jeans. Classic art student move. Displays of artistic explosion. 

He was taking a much-needed break from his senior thesis, a spraypaint coated canvas ripped to shreds and pieced back together with shards of glass and thrifted bandanas. 

Gerard had actually had this idea since early childhood, but it had taken this long to find the courage to actually execute it. Much of his anxiety stemmed from the artist’s visionary/physical disconnect. 

Basically, that panicky fear that you won’t be able to make it look like how it always did in your head.

When he saw it in his head it felt like if he really tried, like,  _ really tried _ that it wouldn’t be nearly as hard as it seemed. It felt as if he was already living there, breathing that air, pacing on those desert landscapes. Still, it had felt safer to hide it away inside himself.

Until he had that crazy dream.

He had spent his whole junior year sobbing bullets at the mention of a thesis or graduation. Gerard was frantically treading water in a growing pool of his own artistic insecurities. There was one night in the summer where he laid in his mother’s basement drenched in sweat, biting his nails til he could taste his own blood. Slowly, his nibbling died out. Yeah, he was sorta falling asleep, but it felt more like being dragged by the hand than a peaceful descent.

A moment of silence, rudely interrupted.

“Hey, pretty boy. Hey, c’mon, ya gotta get up, bud.”

Gerard opened his eyes cautiously and looked towards the voice.

A lean silhouette blocked a raging sun beating down on the arid landscape surrounding the pair. Gerard didn’t move a muscle. In fact, he shut his eyes again. 

The person took two heavy stomps towards him and crouched down in front of his face. Gerard kept his eyes closed but he felt a humid breath on his cheek.

“Ya gotta start running.”

And then he woke up.

  
  


It worked, somehow. The following week was a blazing fury of creative passion and energy. Gerard filled the remainders of old journals with messy designs until he was ready to crack open a new sketchbook and when he did...damn, that was sexy. 

It’s worth noting that Gerard didn’t see the stranger again until nearly two months to the day. Another sweaty night. More anxiety. A gloved hand pushing his head further and further into the pillow. Gerard’s hearing slowly honed in on the sound of someone humming. There was a gentle movement on the bed—was he on a bed?—and the warmth of another person flooding his back. The voice had a tender lilt to it as it began to breathlessly mouth lyrics. Gerard rolled over and finally opened his eyes.

Green eyes perfectly framed between a deep red bandana and long, stringy, obnoxiously red hair. That’s all Gerard could focus on. Breathtakingly vibrant eyes that demanded Gerard’s full attention in the most chaotic room in the world. When they broke their eye contact Gerard had a moment to take in his surroundings.

The redhead was sitting half on half off the metal-spring mattress, which was barren and tucked into the corner of a narrow and dark room. Light barely strained through planks boarding an opening the size of a dresser, drawing Gerard’s eyes to the shelves on the walls holding a wide variety of shit. That was the only way to describe the random collection. Shards of...car parts, Gerard guessed. There were numerous half-opened aluminum cans, some with cables peeking over the edge. Animal bones were interspersed among the broken bits of mechanics. There were several photographs tucked behind nonsensical-looking tools, but they were monochrome and torn in important places.

The stranger, observing Gerard’s wandering eyes, cleared their throat to get his attention. Their eyes narrowed rather suggestively. 

“Are you ready to go deep?”

Gerard screwed his face in confusion. “What? I’m not— I’m not banging you.”

Their eyes crinkled in what Gerard assumed was a smile. “Not yet, cherry pie,” they giggled. “That ain’t what I’m askin’ though. I’m wonderin’ if you see the edges of the motherboard.”

Gerard just stared back with his mouth slightly open.

“Do you,” the stranger exasperatedly continued, turning over onto their side to face Gerard fully, “see the big picture? D’ya understand?” 

Gerard stayed silent. 

Flopping onto their back, they sighed dramatically. “Go back to sleep, then. See if I care.” They spoke with indignance but Gerard saw their eyes sliding over towards him, presumably to gauge his reaction.

Gerard frowned, looking down at the off-white mattress. 

“Okay.”

And then he fell asleep.

When Gerard woke up that morning, he felt like he’d been socked in the gut. He was out of breath and leaning over the edge of his bed, staring down at a pool of vomit. Strange. He hadn’t had anything to drink last night. He barely even touched the leftover lasagna. Still, there was a string of drool connecting from his chin to the hardwood. Gross. He should probably clean that up. At some point. Yeah, at some point he’d clean that up. Not now, though. Not when there was so much to draw. A whole room to draw, in fact. A whole room full of scrap metal and bones.

So, yeah, the vomit stayed on the floor until later that night. And Gerard didn’t eat lunch or dinner or breakfast the next morning. He just drew and drew and drew the shelter he had dreamt, praying to the part of his unconscious that gifted him that dream that it was feeling so selfless as to give him another chance to tell the tacky redhead how he felt ready for the first time in his life.

  
  



	2. People Who Drive With One Foot On The Seat Are Fucking Gay

Gerard’s friends were understandably a little confused when he gave them the flyer for his absence.

Yes, Gerard made up a flyer. He hand-drew a flyer with bats holding a “hibernation nation” banner to give his few friends the notice that he wouldn’t be attending their usual gatherings. Not the DnD nights, or their comic-fight nights, or their “beer n’ fear” nights, no, not for at least a couple months while he invested himself in this world-building “exercise”. For the next couple months he was going to be trying out all that witchy shit that kids tried at middle school sleepovers; astral-projecting, manifestation work, spell jars. They asked a few questions regarding his general safety (Was he eating enough? Was he drinking too much? Did he have a plan if things got bad again?) and he gave them honest answers the best he could without revealing his actual plans. 

They wouldn’t reject him for his newfound interests but they sure as hell wouldn’t let him do all that alone. They’d think it was right-up-their-alley and they’d want to be so involved that Gerard would have no way of focusing enough to make this happen.

Gerard’s first spell jar worked like a charm. All he asked for was an opportunity to get stable, to make enough money so that he could quit his job for at least six months (who knows how things would go after he got back?), and sure enough, he was walking to the bodega when he spotted a flyer for a missing dog. And a huge ass reward.

So he found the dog, and collected his $10,000. Not like it was hard or anything. There was a moment when it seemed too easy, like a part of a story where the author is getting sick of trying to work out the logistics and just wants to get to the fun stuff. However, he was inclined to trust the lengths he had gone to make that money appear for him, so he didn’t linger on the absurdity of it all too much. 

He set up his room like this: if you were standing at the door to his singlet dorm room you’d see straight ahead of you an opaque plastic tarp with a large circle messily painted in a startlingly bright red color inside it. Right past the tarp there was a small dresser blocking a window cloaked in black curtains that sparkled a little when the candles on the bureau were lit, which, like, of course they sparkled. There was the prison-grade wooden bed frame, but the mattress was not horizontal against it; it was propped up against the wall on top of the bed frame to act as a sound buffer. (Sounds that needed buffering included Gerard’s enthusiastic ancient chanting, the occasional clattering of tripping over spare mason jars, and some clapping that was almost music but not really.)

There was hand-drawn art taped to the wall in a very pleasantly messy way. Square papers with scribbles fit neatly against each other with an inch of space between to give that illusion of a frame. Torn scraps of doodles and snippets of sentences were placed in oddly spaced intervals between the more refined art. It was an alright room. Gerard had certainly made it his own. 

Things were aligning for Gerard quite nicely. He quit cigarettes. Not really by choice, he just got so distracted by everything else on his mind that when cravings came, he ignored them enough that they sort of just faded out on their own. He was spending most of his time in his room pouring his attention all over books about lucid dreaming. He didn’t think he really needed coaching, per se, but if he could understand it that meant that he could control it. Control was appealing. Control was safety. 

Gerard sometimes talked out loud to himself. He would cycle through a couple similar phrases, like, “That book was a bit pretentious.” or “I don’t even like breakfast food.” Menial things to make himself known to the universe. Nothing too important. Then one night, as he’s falling asleep, everything feels closer than it's ever been before and something slips out of his mouth. 

“See you soon.” 

“Gerard.” A pause, quick and heavy breaths. “Gerard, wake up. We gotta jet.”

Something pulls at Gerard’s greasy bangs. It feels like a tug-of-war between his scalp and an unknown force, but the thought of opening his eyes and being thrown into this reality is too damn frightening.

“Motherfuck— C’mon, now.” A gloved hand smacks his cheek hard. That gets him up. Gerard recoils with the pain but gets up onto his feet. He whips around wildly trying to locate his surroundings stepping on his own sagging jeans and falling back against something.

There’s a muffled ‘oof’, and then he hears, “Hey, star sniper, cool out.” The voice grabs him under the armpits and drags him backwards. Gerard simply goes limp, being still long enough to take in what he’s seeing. Above him is a lovely lavender sky, maybe the shade is closer to periwinkle, filled to the brim with stars. I mean, those motherfuckers are bright. Or maybe they’re spotlights? Planes? They seemed to be equal parts of each. There are scattered cacti and wiry bushes, but the area is mostly empty. The air is surprisingly cold.

Finally, the human dolly stops its wheels and removes one hand from Gerard. He quickly regains control of his body and stands up for himself. Standing before him is that motherfucker. You know the one. The redhead. They’ve got that familiar outfit: metallic blue jacket tight as hell, thigh-strap with a funny looking gun, gray jeans that need to be washed, but this time around they’re sporting a yellow clown-ish mask that fits over their green eyes. They’re poised quite annoyed with their arms over their chest and a hip cocked to the side. Like how Gerard’s mother would stand when he forgot to defrost the chicken before she came home. There’s a car right behind them, a Pontiac so scuffed and covered in dust that it’s a shock at the power that radiates off it, like it has stories to tell and they all involve explosives. 

They slide into the front seat and gesture at Gerard as they close the door, a beckoning hand. “C’mon. Stop freezing.”

Gerard’s eyes go wide and opens his mouth to protest. He doesn’t get a single word through. They rev the engine and slap the outside of the car door, gritting their teeth at him. It’s enough to get him moving. He jogs to the other side of the car and starts hyperventilating almost immediately as he closes the door. The car’s interior is...appalling. There seems to be blood spatter on both the outside and inside of the windows. There’s a pair of underwear hanging out of the glove compartment. Labelless cans are scattered across the backseat, all empty and smelling somewhat like a mix of tuna and dog food. The stench is almost vomit-inducing. And then suddenly the car is launching through the desert at break-neck speed and everything inside Gerard is screaming to get out. Actually, now it is vomit-inducing.

The driver glances at Gerard and notices that familiar look on their face. They grin and smack a hand on his chest. “Hey, don’t get too excited, save the up-chuck for later, huh?” They wink a few times consecutively.

Gerard screws his face into a look of disgust and confusion. “Save it for later? Why are you trying to make this sexy?”

“Oh,” they pull their lower lip down and out, “is that not sexy?”

Gerard is speechless.

This fucker driving is really pushing the car to its limits, I mean you can practically feel the car starting to craft its suicide note the further the little needle on the dashboard goes closer to its end. They’re approaching two large rock formations, now. The pathway between them seems narrow as they’re approaching it (at 85, maybe 80 miles per hour) but by the time they reach it it’s grown in size and suddenly Gerard feels so, so small. He could fit in someone’s pocket right now and be comfortable. The person next to him releases a long held breath as they reach the threshold of the rocks, relaxing a little in their seat, lifting their left foot to place it on the seat.

“Where are we going?” Gerard’s voice is embarrassingly strained. He sounds like a preteen trying to ask a girl to dance at a bat mitzvah.

“You and I,” they respond smoothly, “are headed to the bunker. Word has it there’s a massive airstrike happening at sunrise, so I’d like to get there before this whole thing goes costa-rica.”

Gerard glances at the sky, noticing how its hue has deepened to black. How long has it been?

“How long has it been?”

The driver cocks their head. “How long has it been since what? Last airstrike?”

Gerard shakes his head, “No, I’m sorry, I should have clarified. How long have we known each other? I mean, you keep saying my name and you keep finding me, so…”

They sigh and glance around the area as they near the end of the rock-tunnel. “Well, that’s a long ass broadcast. You alright if we wait til the bunker to smooth out the wrinkles in this whole thing?”

Gerard isn’t that disappointed. He somehow suspected them to dodge the question. “Sure, of course.”

So, for now, they are simply driving. It is peaceful, honestly. They’re a good driver, and their turns are smooth around large boulders and sometimes making random turns to “throw off the bats”. They don’t bother trying to make too much small talk, knowing that one question is just going to lead to another larger question, and honestly, they really don’t have enough combined brain cells to comprehend everything that’s about to happen. So much has happened and yet so much is yet to happen that they’re both going to have to settle for now on what they’ve been given. They’ve been given this drive, tranquil and full of stars. That will have to be enough for them for now.


End file.
